Looks like Samsung wants to be a contender in the “smart home” arena. Just saw this on Android Central:
From the surface overview given it looks like it isn’t much less capable than Vera is out of the box. Who knows what protocol they plan on using for things like lights. If it’s Z-Wave then Vera will have nothing on it without the plugins. If a few members were to pull their utilities (cough, RTS… PLEG, cough) as has been done before by plugin developers who jumped ship Vera would founder as Samsung and similar ilk have massive capital and clout to throw around for marketing. It’s slowly ramping up. The time is coming when home automation will be clearly differentiated from home control.
Now I’m off to browse the forums of competing systems while this takes 2 -3 minutes to post…
To be honest I wouldn’t go near it. Samsung is starting to be too much like Apple. And I have not been very impressed with any of their tech except their appliances. I can almost guarantee that is will be limited in what it can do. The great thing about vera is that you can almost integrate anything into it as long as you have the access to the other devices protocol. This of course is ignoring Vera’s limitations / issues.
Find me a product that has the ability to integrate anything you want and not be tied down.
it apears like the broad market (bsically almost anything) going to be into “home control”
and leaving behind “home automation”.
this systems will hit the limitations very quickly …
and if the vera will be able to connect to them, vera will be the winner after all.
as for me personally, home control makes just zero sense to me …
as finding the phine, connect wifi, start an app … and whatever you have to do to be cool.
takes just alot longer then simply walking to the switch an punch it
Yes, yes. I fully agree with the above points myself. The point I was trying to make is that for the average user Vera doesn’t offer much more out of the box without the plugins. It is true that Vera can be connected to any manner of things. The catch is that if you aren’t a developer and someone else hasn’t made a plugin for what you need you are SOL. This puts Vera squarely in the hobbyist/developer camp where the aforementioned Samsung system is aimed at Joe six pack. I am often longing to do things with Vera which I simply can’t. Either because it doesn’t have the functionality out of the box or because no one has developed a plugin for it and I can’t make one myself. This leaves Vera in limbo. It’s not as functional as the home automation competition and appears to not be as user friendly as the home control competition. I have said here recently that I believe it will be years before home automation becomes casually viable for the average person and I think that this all just goes to reinforce that statement. Home automation is slowly maturing. For the main stream it’s currently happening in the juvenile form of home control. In time this will mature into home automation.
On the other hand, if you want to use a device not supported by Vera (non Z-wave stuff), with Vera at least it is possible for you or someone else to quickly and sort of easily develop and deploy a plugin. On most other platforms, you’ll have to wait on the manufacturer’s good graces. Will Samsung provide plugins for DCS alarms, Philips Hue lights? Perhaps. Will they provide plugins for NEST? Doubtful. For Dutch smart meters? Fat chance. For my homebrew sprinkler controller? …
I will not touch any home automation system that does not have a rich API for plugins and a functional interface for 3rd party apps, and a vibrant user community. Vera offers all of that. And even Joe Sixpack benefits from those things.
S-F has a very valid point. I just want any Z-wave device I buy to be fully supported, never mind things that aren’t Z-wave. Know what’s great about Logitech Harmony remotes? They support just about any piece of A/V equipment out there, and requests for new device support are turned around quickly, without pleading or begging. That’s an example of a complicated consumer tech product done right. The WAF on Harmony Remotes is through the roof.
I’ve got a full time job in tech, a family, a house to take care of, etc. I don’t need another “hobby”, I need a product that works out of the box. If it wasn’t for user plugins like PLEG, Vera (out of the box) would be no more powerful than most simple HA controllers that are on the market now. MCV better hit a home run with UI7.
Please don’t overlook that I’m saying “out of the box”. Here I am using Vera in all kinds of capacities it doesn’t support “out of the box” due to the good nature of our community members. I’m not saying that I personally desire to switch to the Samsung system. I don’t. I’m just saying that for the masses it and other systems like it will be more appealing than Vera and other like systems due either to complexity, cost, difficulty of use or lack of support for various functions. If I could wave a magic wand and make what is to me “the perfect system” it wouldn’t be for the masses either due to it’s complexity.
Yeah and the Samsung door locks are sooo sexy! They currently only sell them in Asia but they are NFC enabled. Using my Samsungs GS3 to unlock my front door would be pretty sweet. Now if only google wallet was more widely deployed I could leave my keys and wallet at home and just carry my phone…
I think that regardless of how many come to market… its only a good thing… no matter how limited they are. It forces competition… brings prices down and gives us more choice.
Think about how much begging and wailing is done want Vera to be fixed… they will quickly get off their ass when Samsung takes away a boatload of cash from the market
Fully agree that stuff needs to work out of the box and at a higher abstraction level (lights, switches instead of instant status reporting and scene controllers), before home automation is ready for prime time. But the best stuff works at 2 levels: simple functions that “just work” for everybody, combined with the ability for experts to augment functionality and share their work. One problem is that it is hard to support everything, or even a significant area of this space, without a sizable investment. Small firms cannot afford this and may have to rely on the community to supply some of the work. Large firms can make the investment but these days many of them are not very inclined to open up their system to others or publish an API (Apple), or they require access to our data for whatever nefarious purposes (Google). They might reach the mainstream but for some of us this would never be a complete or acceptable solution.
Harmony is an interesting example. Remember that they offer a “development” option for equipment not in their database (the IR learning function), and that a good part of their initial equipment database was filled by the community! In that way they are somewhat similar to MCV, though what is ostensibly missing from Vera is the ability for the community to add support for new Z-wave devices. Given this lack, and the rather limited amount of Z-wave manufacturers and new devices on the market, MCV’s failure to provide timely support for new devices is inexcusable, and ultimately detrimental to their success.
Of course there are additional issues, mainly usability. A sensible UI is something that MCV could provide, but some of seems inherent to Z-wave.
Exactly. It’s not like it can’t be done or is cost prohibitive. It’s having the vision and wherewithal to see something like this through. It’s keeping the lines of communication open with your power users so that you can provide a better product to your mainstream users (the ones that pay the bills). I get the sense that many of us here in these forums have experience in product development and management, hence why MCV should be communicating more with us.
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